-100 to +14000ft on the Big Island, Hawaii

  There are only a few places on Earth where you can go from a hundred feet below sea level to fourteen thousand feet above in a matter of hours. The Big Island is a perfect place for this unique adventure. Now for those of you who know a bit about scuba diving you know it is not healthy to go on a dive and then travel to extreme heights. So this adventure is best done in reverse. Start your day watching the sunrise on mighty Mauna Kea then travel down to the beach for a scuba dive off the warm tropical Kona coastline.
  Our dive site was one of my all time favorites. It is a place locally known as two-step, or O'Hanaunau. We were very lucky this day because a small pod of Hawaiian spinner dolphins were cruising back and forth out in the bay. So we snorkeled out closer to them and let them swim to and fro sometimes coming quite close. We didn't chase them or make them change their behavior. I was able to snap a couple of pictures as they swam past me. Even as we descended we could still see the dolphins gliding up near the surface.

 Going so far down I knew we should try to make it as high in elevation as we could on our short trip to the Big Island. So after seeing the lava flowing in the ocean we took our Jeep up the steep winding road to the top of Mauna Kea. A short hike to the tallest peak brought us to a oxygen depraved 13,803ft. We were above the clouds and in the mid 40's for temperature. The atmosphere is thinner here so countries have built massive telescopes that search the night skies for new discoveries. This island is definitely a land of contrast. Our four day adventure took us from coral reefs to lava to the sub-Arctic tundra of Mauna Kea.